


Either Way, I Love You (Even if You Don’t Love Yourself)

by wowsuchtrash



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Boyfriends, Fluff, Gay Keith, Happy Ending, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I needed consolation, Keith is awkward, Keith/Lance - Freeform, Klance Week 2018, Klance plz be canon I've stanned for two years, Lance is a good swimmer, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mutual Pining, One Shot, One-Shot, Oneshot, Oops, Post-Season/Series 01, Really fluffy, Relationship(s), Season 6 ruined me okay??, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, TAGGING IS HARD OKaY, Whipped Keith, beach, bi lance, but kinda, but yeah, klance, lance is not okay, oof, they're on a beach, wow i'm trash for writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-17 14:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14833893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowsuchtrash/pseuds/wowsuchtrash
Summary: Keith is hella gay and he wants to treat Lance right (because he loves him unconditionally).





	Either Way, I Love You (Even if You Don’t Love Yourself)

**Author's Note:**

> I swear it’s not as bad as the summary makes it out to be. Please read (I’m so desperate you don’t have to but I BEG (lol you really don’t have to))

His eyes are the brightest, most ecstatic blue. They glow and shine in the light. When he’s happy, they twinkle and look like an oasis. When he’s mad, waves crash through them with a dark and stormy sky. When he cries, his tears fall like stars down his face and make his eyes vibrant. When he cries, I kiss his tears away.

His mouth works magic. His smile is white and blinding and clean. His kisses can be soft and loving. Other times, we collide with alarming ferocity, rough and passionate. He can be gentle and precise. He can be unprocessed and austere. But every time we kiss, it seems as if fireworks explode throughout my entire body. 

His body is amazing. It’s muscular and tall and sinewy and lean. Both of our forms mold perfectly together. Our love can be amiable and domesticated or concupiscent and stimulated. When I see him, in any situation, I go wild with desire. Other times, when we hug or just touch, electricity seems to move back and forth between us. 

His words make me feel loved. Safe. I couldn’t live without them. His words are sensual and desirous and soft and pure. His voice is suave and husky. When I hear him, it excites me. He has a voice for just me and a voice for everyone else. It makes me feel special. Unique and better than I am. His words make me feel those things.

Either way, we’re perfect. He’s perfect.

But he doesn’t know this. He doesn’t recognize how perfect, how beautiful he is. He doesn’t take appreciative words to heart, nor my loving praises. 

He masks his self-loathing with fake confidence and flirtatious jokes. 

It’s only late at night, when we’re alone, does he sob into my shoulder and tells me his hate, his problems.

I want to change that.

***

His eyes fluttered like a bluebird, waking up to the harsh lights of the Altean castle I just turned on.

“Really, Keith?” he asks.

“Shiro’s given us a day off because ‘you’ve all just been working so hard’ or whatever. And I have plans,” I reply.

He sighs. “Five more minutes!” he pleads.

“When you say that, you mean, like, three hours! Get up!”

“You’re not my mom!”

I walk a few paces to hover over him, and say, “I know. I’m your daddy.”

He instantly turns red. “Keith!” he yells. “You can’t spring that on me in the morning!”

“Can’t I?”

He bites his check. “I hate you.”

“Love you too, Lance,” I giggle. 

Then, he pulls me so I lay on top of him, and hugs me so tight I can’t push him away. 

“I said five more minutes, Keith!”

“Fine,” I say, bequeathing my judgement to him. “But only five.”

“Ten.”

“Absolutely not!”

“Fifteen.”

“Ten it is,” I give in, and cuddle deeper into his chest. “You, Lance McClain, are impossible.”

“But you love me.”

And I let out a vocal groan of confirmation. He really is impossible. But ten minutes pass in a flash, and I wish I would’ve given him his fifteen minutes.

However, I push him off his bed to wake him up, and he lands with a soft thud on the ground. 

“Bitch…” he groans.

“I told you that we’re going somewhere, Lance. Get dressed.”

“Hmph. Fine!” he says, with mock sass.

He doesn’t move, and just stares at me. I raise my eyebrows at him, and then he starts to get dressed. “What would be appropriate to wear today, Keith?” he questions. “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” I reply. “Just put a shirt and shorts on, I guess. That’s what I’ll be wearing, at least.”

“Sure. How will we be arriving to this surprise place, Keith?”

“Jesus Christ, can you ask any more questions?” But as soon as I saw the tan skin of his long legs and chest, I stammered, “My- my lion. You- you know, Red. I’ll drive. Or fly, I guess. Let’s meet there in, say, um, ten minutes?”

He simply laughed and nodded in agreement. I leave his messy room for my own, running, face red with embarrassment.

***

It’s been twelve minutes and forty-three seconds.

Thirteen minutes.

Fourteen.

Fifteen.

At sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds, Lance finally walks into Red’s hangar.

Before I can point out his seven-minute lateness, he says, “Can’t rush beauty, Keith. It takes a lot to look this good.”

And he did look good. He was wearing simple dark blue shorts and a white t-shirt, but still.

As he approached, he said, “You look better, though.”

“Don’t say that, Lance! You look great!”

“Pfft.” He finally was facing me, and gave me a kiss on my cheek. 

He passes through Red’s protective particle barrier like it’s nothing, due to our relationship.

“Come on, Keith, we apparently need to be somewhere,” he calls without looking back. “Can I drive?”

“No!” I yell after him.

He laughs and Red bends down and opens her mouth, ready for us to board. He walks straight to the cockpit nonchalantly like he runs the place, and I follow.

As soon as I sit down, facing the controls, he sits on my lap sideways, legs dangling over the armrest.

“What the hell are you doing, McClain?” I ask him jokingly.

He smiles at me and says, “Waiting for you to take me on a joyride, pilot.”

And with that, I took off.

***

As we fly through the depths of a never-ending space, of course Lance has to have an existential crisis. “Have you ever thought about how, like, insignificant we are, Keith? Like, once this whole war is over and we defeat the Galra, we’ll just go back to earth and be normal humans. Never again will we explore the far reaches of a cruel, unforgiving universe.” Way to be dramatic. 

“Lance, I’m sure when we get home, we will be showered with money and fame and glory until the day we die. We’ll have gold statues raised for us! Sure, Earth may not know about the Galra, but Voltron is pretty cool, and I’m sure we could bring a few…” I pause, processing my next words. “Willing test subjects home. And you’re not insignificant. At least not to me.”

“Sure, Keith, whatever you say.”

“I thought that I was supposed to be the emo one of the Paladins, Lance! Don’t take this from me!”

He snickers at that, but looks back to the stars. They reflect in his eyes beautifully. He then wraps his arms around my neck and leans his head on my shoulder.

After flying for just a little while longer, we arrive. The planet is bright blue with small dots of yellow. It took me ages to find this, but here we are.

As soon as Lance realized that the blue is an ocean and the yellow is islands and beaches, he stands up clumsily and exclaims, “Hurry up! Faster!” His eyes seem as wide as the planet itself, grin plastered wide across his face. Because of this, I speed Red towards a small island, which I learned from the planet’s inhabitants was called Bihira. It had the surface area of a blue whale, and already had makeshift beach-y items set up.

Let’s get one thing straight… I’ve never been to a beach. However, Lance looks excited, so I figure I did something right. As soon as we land, Lance stumbles out of Red, throwing off his sandals and wiggling his toes in the sand. I, for one, walk like a normal person out of the lion, and meander over to the beach chairs, smiling as Lance runs all about the small island. There was nothing here but us and Red. 

To jerk me from my thoughts, there was a loud SPLASH. I look to the blue water to find Lance’s shirt discarded by the shore, and himself in the water. “Keith!” he yells. “Come swim with me! It’s amazing!”

I let out a groan. I hate swimming. But for him, I’d do anything. I walk to the water, taking off my shirt and sandals as I walk, and throw them near the chairs, and stroll into the sea. Lance waits for me, chest-deep in the warm water, as I step in. His eyes look like they’re pleading for me to hurry up, so I go slower. He sees this, and raises his eyebrows expectantly. 

He lets out an exasperated huff of air, breathes deeply, and dives under the water. Before I could even look where he was, my legs were pulled from under me. I landed ass-first on the floor of the ocean, and was then picked up bridal-style. Of course, it was Lance.

“You can’t deny me when we’re in the ocean, Keith. You may have been raised on bread and knife fights, but the water is what I grew up in. I can swim like a fucking dolphin,” he says, matter-of-factly. I laugh until he starts walking deeper into the water.

“Lance… Lance, what are you doing?”

“Trust me,” he responds. “I’ll keep you safe.”

At his words, I lean into his chest, resting my head on his shoulder. He comes to a standstill, and the water is up to my shoulder. We stay like that for a minute. And then, he drops — no, throws — me into the water, head going under and everything.

I surface, sputtering and swearing. Lance just laughs. “You should’ve seen your face, Keith!” he says.

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

“You’re right.”

We both giggle at that, and lean closer to each other. 

He wraps his arms around my waist, and rests his head on the top of mine. We stay like that for a while. Sometimes, he kisses the top of my head. It takes a while for the two suns to set, and until then, the water is a pleasant temperature. But then, after what must have been hours of soft kisses, small words and looking at the sky and the sea and the clouds, the water became cold.

“We should get out,” I say to him. “I don’t want either of us to catch a cold.”

“But I love you,” he whines.

“That’s a lame excuse to not get out of the cold water.”

“I love you, Keith. And I’m not getting out of this water until you return my declaration of eternal love!”

With a sigh, I say, “I love you too, Lance.”

“Great! Let’s get out of this water! It’s fucking cold.” He starts to wade back to the small island with the minuscule amount of sunset resting in the small of his back, slowly fading down his legs.

Let’s get another thing straight… I’m not. And god damn it, if I’m not gonna marry him, I might as well just die.

So, I follow him back to the sand, where he’s already wrapped in a towel, cross-legged. 

In my rush to say, ‘you’re a good swimmer,’ and, ‘you look good all wet,’ I stutter out, “Y- you’re wet.” Good fucking job, Keith.

He breaks out laughing at this. In a flash of tanned skin and a striped towel, we’re both wrapped in said towel, laying on the sand. Fuck this. Fuck Lance and his stupidly perfect face. Fuck his perfect skin. Fuck his perfect body. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Lance McClain,” I spit out. Shit. There’s no going back now. Might as well make this good. “I don’t have a ring. I don’t have a family and I know we’re a fuckton of miles from Earth, but promise me that whatever happens, we’ll make it back. And when we do, marry me. I love you, Lance. So much.”

He’s silent.

How does one delete their entire existence?

Just when I’m about to take my words back in a flurry of self-doubt, he says, “Of course I’ll marry you, idiot. There’s no one I’d rather spend the rest of my life with. So I’ll not be a dumbass. I’ll stay alive. For you. I may hate myself, but I love you. More than anything.”

When I look at him, there’s tears running down his face. And now they’re falling from my eyes. Great.

He pulls me into a hug.

The last of the sunlight dips below the horizon, and we stay under the uncountable amount of stars until we’re freezing but warm in each other’s arms.

***

Back on Red, Lance says to me, “Our love for each other is bigger than the universe.”

“I’m pretty sure how much I love you is bigger than you.”

“That’s cheesy.”

“You started it.”

Lance laughs. “You love it.”

“You know I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> This took me like 3 months to write because WRITER’S BLOCK and SCHOOL and because WHAT ARE ORIGINAL IDEAS?? But yeah I hope you enjoyed. Please comment or give kudos or whatever because I’m desperate for attention. Thanks again!


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